


redamancy

by lisettedelapin



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 22:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4852523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisettedelapin/pseuds/lisettedelapin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not the first time he feels the next thought settle heavily into a lump at the back of his throat. What does he have to change to be the right type of friend? Does he keep his hands held too tightly to himself? Or when his palms are open do they too closely resemble fault lines across the surface of shaken pottery? Perhaps he is not capable of storing keepsakes. Youkai, for as transitory as they deem mortals, are really only fleeting presences in Natsume’s life. They’ve less to lose in trusting him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	redamancy

**Author's Note:**

> a horribly horribly horribly belated birthday gift to frey, who i love dearly and who also knows me well enough to probably not be too surprised by how late this is...
> 
> this fic was in part fuelled by[Epilogue by Ólafur Arnalds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvAyWNQU7oY)!

It is the beginning of spring when the last vestiges of winter seek Tanuma. He catches a cold as quietly as he does everything else. Really, it’s lucky that Natsume is one so well attuned to what others may not see.  

Natsume breaches the topic after school. The majority of students have already left and Tanuma is crouched in front of the getabako when Natsume hears him sniff. 

“Tanuma?” 

At the sound of his name, Tanuma cranes his neck to look at Natsume. He hums in question.

It feels odd to be taller than Tanuma and so, before Natsume speaks, he lowers himself so that they’re face to face. It’s much better this way, he decides, when he sees the beginnings of a smile catch the corners of Tanuma’s mouth.

“Are you sick?” Natsume says, simply. 

Tanuma’s eyes widen by a second, and then seem to soften just as Natsume feels concern swell in his chest. 

 _You can tell me_ , he thinks. And the words shiver with a blurred sort of reverberation; he’s heard them before in a different voice. 

Natsume watches Tanuma avert his gaze, feels a flare of familiarity that flickers down to a prickle. 

“Not at all,” Tanuma says, voice coming firmer than Natsume expects.

“Are you resting well enough? If it’s too much exposure t--” 

“No, it’s not that!” Tanuma says, shifting his attention back to tying his shoelaces. “There’s nothing to worry about.” He turns to Natsume again, this time prepared with a soft smile.

There’s an age old wariness that laces the air when Natsume sighs. Tanuma’s smile is one that is reassuring. And it’s tricky, really, to figure out if Natsume wants to be the recipient of it. Reassurance is a courtesy one chooses to extend; Natsume knows all too well that sometimes you have to take from yourself to give it. 

It’s not the first time he feels the next thought settle heavily into a lump at the back of his throat. What does he have to change to be the right type of friend? Does he keep his hands held too tightly to himself? Or when his palms are open do they too closely resemble fault lines across the surface of shaken pottery? Perhaps he is not capable of storing keepsakes. Youkai, for as transitory as they deem mortals, are really only fleeting presences in Natsume’s life. They’ve less to lose in trusting him.

Tanuma cares for him. 

 _Let me deserve that_ , Natsume thinks.  

He realises he’s frowning when he sees that Tanuma’s brows are furrowed and, suddenly, he finds himself aware of the tension at his own temples. They both rise now, Tanuma having finished swapping his shoes. They’re in need of a shine; Natsume only notices because his gaze is stuck to the ground, his hand pressed to the back of his neck.

There’s a whirl of half-formed sentiments he feels more than understands. He wants to be able to track the course of them. But when he tries to figure his feelings out in the proximity of thoughts of Tanuma, they only tangle and knot themselves under Natsume’s tongue.  

“Ah, Natsume--“ 

He hears Tanuma heave in a breath. When he looks, anxiety jerking his chin up at the sound, Tanuma’s nose is scrunching. His eyes are shut tight and he’s opening his mouth alarmingly wide and Natsume realises what’s happening right as Tanuma rears back and--

he _sneezes_.

Natsume’s heart just about jumps from his chest at the sound. 

Somewhat pathetically, Tanuma sniffs. And then quickly, he surveys his surroundings. There’s no one else left in the building by now.

“S’just a cold,” he says when, hesitantly, his gaze flicks back to Natsume. And the cautious look he fixes Natsume with is one of such sheepish surrender; Natsume can’t help but breathe out the warm afterthought of a laugh. 

“It doesn’t mean -- I still--“ Tanuma huffs, his brows knitting again. Natsume wishes smoothing out the crease could be as easy as exhaling against a paper slip.

Then again the process of returning names to youkai isn’t quite that simple.

And pressing his lips to Tanuma’s forehead would be -- _no_ , no that’s an inappropriate thought. Natsume’s ears burn. He’s trying to will away the colour that must be spread across his cheeks when Tanuma finds (or perhaps gives up on) the right words.

“I still want you to tell me if any ayakashi bother you.”

At that, Natsume reaches for his own hands; clasping his fingers tight as if to stop the flutter of his stomach from really taking flight. 

“They can wait,” he says. And as the words settle, he finds that they are genuine. Perhaps they will not be true tonight, in the face of unexpected guests at Natsume’s window; but for now, he means it. 

“You know it’s okay, you can tell me if you get sick.”

Tanuma does not respond, but his eyes are keen in a way where it seems like he’s searching his own silence. 

He exhales now. And when Natsume lifts his chin, the moment they seek each other is so unguarded in its earnesty; Natsume cannot decide whether the chill jittering down his back is born from the feeling that he is intruding, or from the thought that he might be looking into a mirror.

The side of Tanuma’s mouth quirks in a bemused sort of smile. “Would you promise to do the same if we switched places?”

Natsume pauses, his voice halts with him. The word “promise” kisses his fingertips like a key whispering against a lock. And when he inhales, it is as if the meaning is coiling its way through him, winding its way between his ribs.

Instead of speaking, he nods. 

~

It is second nature, by now, for Tanuma to notice Natsume. He’s not always watching; that would be creepy, after all. But he can’t shake this lingering sense of awareness. It’s peripheral vision, thought caught in the back of his head, the unassuming expectancy of waiting without knowing. 

And he understands why it’s only Natsume that has him feeling like this -- because of course it’s Natsume. But it’s difficult to come to grips with the feeling itself. How has Natsume spun new wiring between Tanuma’s nerves, without ever breaking him open? 

Then again, maybe he was already open. One has to be open to be hollow -- Tanuma used to think that the world would travel through him rather than he through it. If he held even a leaf to his mouth, there’d be no air in him for it to so much as shiver. 

Before he knew the unattached shadows for what they really were, he believed they’d been misplaced or left behind. Secretly, he’d always wondered if to others he appeared just the same. And it’s different now. Since meeting Natsume, he feels solid, real. He worries sometimes, with this newfound weight of existence, that he is about to burst at his freshly sewn seams. 

In ways, it is a frightening change. But every time Natsume lets him in, Tanuma knows that he would choose this feeling. One hundred times over.

And it’s because it’s second nature to notice Natsume, that by the end of the school day, Tanuma registers the vague thought that Natsume’s eyes weren’t sunken upon their greeting this morning; he didn’t look close to falling asleep at lunch. 

_No ayakashi yesterday._

Tanuma feels guilty when he smiles to himself, he can’t help the vague inkling that perhaps he’s a little pleased for selfish reasons.

And the satisfaction twinges in him once more when, again, Natsume tracks him down after school. They make it outside this time, students moving around them as easily as the flurry of leaves spinning in the hold of the rising late afternoon wind. There’s a plastic bag hanging from Natsume’s grasp, a shy smile Tanuma wishes he could secure in the same manner.

“How are you feeling?” Natsume asks.

Tanuma’s heart freezes; that’s much too loaded a question. And then he realises, _oh_ , his cold. He’s used to it really, doesn’t remember the last time he managed to go more than a week without a runny nose at the least. He gets the feeling that wouldn’t do much to assuage Natsume’s worry though.

“Good, now,” he says, instead. And it may not answer what Natsume is specifically trying to ask but, standing in front of him, Tanuma means it all the same. “Thank you,” he adds, chancing a proper look at Natsume’s face. 

Natsume blushes, but he doesn’t look altogether convinced. Nonetheless, he doesn’t press; instead, pointing at the bag with his free hand. 

“It’s not much but I--uh--I brought you some mandarins. Since they say Vitamin C is good for the immune system and all.” 

Natsume holds the bag out to him now, and Tanuma finds the thoughts forming too sluggishly in his head.

“You didn’t have to do anything,” he finally manages, still feeling more struck than anything else.

“No, I really wanted to.” The shadow cast by Natsume’s eyelashes flicker when he looks up at Tanuma. “I know that since you met me you’ve been dragged into a bit of a mess. It’s the least I can do.”

He’s got that look on his face -- Tanuma has come to recognise it -- where it’s like Natsume is trying to wish himself away.

Tanuma curls his fingers tight into his palms. “It’s not like that…” 

How does he tell Natsume that he used to look in the mirror and see the hollows of a tree, used to feel like he’d melt into bathwater, go to sleep and between the course of night and morning, drift through the crack of the front door as easy as dust swept from under the mat. How does he tell Natsume that he knows all of these things, and he knows that when he looks at Natsume, none of it is what he sees.  

He swallows thickly; tries to push down the smoke, the debris, of all that has made Natsume view himself the way he does. 

“It’s scary sometimes, I can’t lie about that, but this--it’s better like this. Ayakashi never frightened me when I only saw their shadows. They still don’t really bother me, even knowing what they are now but--“ _Keep going._ “It’s thinking about you dealing with them alone and me…me alone back here. I don’t like that…” 

Natsume seems to freeze for a moment, before his brows furrow and his mouth sets in a hard, exhausted looking line. 

 _He still thinks I’m wrong_ , Tanuma realises. 

He wants to grab Natsume’s wrists, wishes he could tap the message to his pulse.

“I’m glad we’re friends, Natsume.”

His heart twists when Natsume’s eyes widen, his mouth slipping open to catch new air like a cracked window.A moment passes and Tanuma figures he’s lost for words. He knows the feeling well. 

He rubs at his arm, why does he feel like he’s let on too much by telling Natsume something so simple? It’s just the truth to Tanuma by now; he swallowed it the very moment Natsume reached for him.

It’s a weighty feeling though. He looks at the mandarins now and he remembers something. When he speaks, his words float with an absent-minded sort of ease. 

“I don’t remember much of my mother but she told me once that if I swallowed fruit seeds, I’d grow into a tree.” 

It snaps Natsume out of his reverie, and, with a start, he extends the bag towards Tanuma once again. This time Tanuma takes it with a nod of his head and a half-turned smile playing at his cautious mouth, the scent of citrus cutting the air. His fingers brush over Natsume’s during the transfer, and he has to swallow against the new dryness at his throat.

“I-I can’t place why, but the thought always stuck with me. And I used to think maybe that’s exactly what was supposed to happen to me. I couldn’t relate to people as I was, after all.” Under Tanuma’s breath comes a quiet, embarrassed laugh; as if to cover what has just been said, efface the meaning.

“Anyway, where’d you get these?” he adds, holding up the mandarins.

Natsume is sheepish when he responds, hair moving across his forehead when he turns his head a fraction to the side. “There’s a garden with really healthy fruit trees north of where I li--“

“You stole them?” Tanuma says, more amused than accusatory. 

“Ah, n-not stole, per se…it was more uh…”

Tanuma quirks an eyebrow.

“Well, if Nyanko-sensei was to find himself in a tree, and he was to shake that tree -- you know how heavy he is -- and the fruit from the tree just happened to fly across the fence…”

“ _Natsume_ ,” Tanuma says, laughing now.

“Not stealing.”

“Okay,” Tanuma acquiesces. It’s easy to do that for Natsume.

“Please eat them, they’ll be better for you than the ones from the store, I think.”

“Okay.”

Tanuma smiles. The breeze flutters like the Earth is slowing to laugh with them.

~

Natsume is winded by the time he and Tanuma stumble into a clearing in the forest. He has to press his hands to his knees, keeling over to draw as much air into his lungs as possible. It’s working until he hears Tanuma laugh breathlessly, the sound laboured but so full of the contagious gratitude that only comes from escaping near death situations. Natsume cannot help but laugh too, his chest aching with the effort. 

“That was--“ Tanuma has to take a moment to catch his breath. “That was completely _terrifying_.”

“You’re lucky you couldn’t see its face,” Natsume replies. And he’s laughing again, half delirious but thankfully alive, at the memory of the particularly vicious youkai they’d had the misfortune of running into. 

But after a moment it’s not so funny. His heartbeat is a frantic stutter forward, a bird flying with one broken wing. And he’s losing his sense of equilibrium, each beat clamouring against his chest to knock it open. 

There’s touch, then, grazing his right wrist, forcing him to draw his breath in tight and release it slow, to still the seconds. Tanuma takes his hand, hesitant at first, before he fits his fingers between Natsume’s and folds them. 

“You’re shaking,” Tanuma says, lullaby-soft but cut by a concern that doesn’t seem to sleep. 

Natsume remembers the sight of ten spindly fingers reaching for Tanuma.

He’s still terrified.

“Natsume?”

The thing is, Natsume has never considered himself brave. Not really. He would say that, more than anything, he is very adept at hiding. But now, something in him is shifting, the structures holding him together are weather-stricken -- cracked columns, a door blown off its hinges. He feels transparent when he raises his gaze to look at Tanuma. 

“Why do you still come with me?” he asks.

He has been wounded so many times by courtesy, always obliged rather than given.

Tanuma takes a breath, still clasping Natsume’s hand. “I want to know what you see.” 

Then, quietly, he adds: “and what if one day you didn’t come back?”

Natsume doesn’t know how to answer that. Nor does he know whether he should admit that he has asked himself the same question countless times before.

A lot of nameless ayakashi, he figures. But Tanuma still holds his hand, looks at him with a patience that seems just as unsure as it does knowing. And there’s the thought, shaky in the shy light it has hidden itself from for so long, that Natsume might matter beyond what he understands of himself. 

Bordered by trees, he can see the haphazard wisps of hasty cirrus clouds in the sky. He decides then that if Tanuma does not mention the fact that their hands are still joined, he will not either. 

“You know, I’ve never thought it was all scary,” Tanuma says. He looks from Natsume to the sky and back again, and Natsume’s answering smile feels tremulous, but real all the same. 

The searching cry of a swallow sounds, and the treetops sway and bend like strings plucked on a koto. He imagines the white-tipped swish of a russet tail, ducking out of sight like a blown out flame, then fireflies, white lights. 

And Tanuma, with the ghost of a certain melancholy haunting his surprise each time Natsume calls his name. With a smile that seems to come faster with each day. Tanuma, who trembles sometimes but always plants his feet beside Natsume.

“I guess it really isn’t.” He nods, soft now, and wonders if the butterflies in his stomach have only been trying to lead him to shelter.

The trees breathe the wind back to each other, Natsume listens to their sighs. His eyes widen when he blinks and spots Hinoe perched comfortably atop a branch. She inclines her head at him, stands on the branch and then steps into the air. She’s silent as she emerges from the thickets, floating to the ground, the rich purple of her kimono sleeves billowing like a night breeze.

Natsume swallows thickly. He removes his hand from Tanuma’s and, at his vague noise of confusion, Natsume turns to look at him. His cheeks are bright red and he hurries to drop his gaze as soon as Natsume’s eyes are on him. 

Tanuma finds Hinoe’s shadow. Natsume knows because he freezes suddenly, a quiet “oh” dropping his mouth open. 

“Hinoe,” Natsume whispers, before Tanuma can worry. 

“Can you manage a single day without being chased by hungry youkai?” Hinoe asks, closer now, with her deep as wine voice; the gold ornaments in her hair catching spilled sunlight as she glides into the clearing.

Natsume shifts to face her. “I don’t mean to. I’m sor--“

She heaves a tired sigh. “Don’t apologise. He wasn’t hard to deal with -- I only had to tell him you ran in the opposite direction.”

Natsume thanks her in a rush, his lungs loosening in relief. 

She waves a manicured hand in dismissal. “Go home, it’ll be safer tomorrow,” 

Natsume is about to protest before she cuts him off once more.

“A greedy thing,” she says, sniffing primly, her gaze flinty. “He’ll forget about you once he’s found a different meal, so you can come back then. We do live forever; one more day won’t hurt whichever ayakashi you’ve promised this time.”

Hinoe smiles at Natsume now, which considering he isn’t a girl, really means that she doesn’t scowl -- one corner of her mouth perhaps lifted minutely. 

“And I gather you wouldn’t want to endanger this one,” she adds, lifting her chin to the side that Tanuma stands.

And just like that, Natsume changes his mind. He reaches for Tanuma’s hand, landing his fingers light as a butterfly on the knuckle. He’s afraid to hope for Tanuma to twine their fingers again, but fear has never stopped any force in Natsume’s life, and so his heart suspends itself at the thought of Tanuma’s touch. 

“We should go home and come back tomorrow,” he says, softly.

“It’s funny,” comes Hinoe’s voice.

And Natsume breathes now, as Tanuma holds his hand before the nerves can make his fingers shake. 

“And I’ll come too,” Tanuma says, definitively. 

Hinoe’s got her head cocked lazily to the side to watch the exchange, one eyebrow raised. “It’s funny,” she repeats. “He looks at you like I looked at Reiko.” 

Natsume’s breath catches in his throat, his eyes widening as he stands, arrested to the spot. 

“I wonder if things might’ve been different had she looked at me the way you look at him.” She closes her eyes, perhaps recedes to the sleeping backbeat of a heart even the book of friends could not truly know. When she opens them again, redwood under her lashes, she bids Natsume goodbye without words, but rather a proper curve of her lips. She leaves as silently as she’d appeared.

Natsume exhales then, in a stilted sort of gasp. And Tanuma asks him what she said. 

Natsume can only think of her smile; real this time, and more bittersweet than the blanket hush of snowfall. 

He squeezes Tanuma’s hand. It’s true, the world of ayakashi is not all scary, but this -- the thought of his fingers slipping from Tanuma’s -- it sweeps him out and leaves him barren. 

~ 

It’s been a surprisingly quiet week for Natsume, which means it has been a surprisingly quiet week for Tanuma. They’ve only just managed to trust the peace well enough to move past cautious restlessness and genuinely relax. 

Tanuma is thankful to spend time together where they can be nothing but students, friends. He wonders, sometimes, if he would prefer a life like this. He chooses no every time; he would not know Natsume if it weren’t for him being caught in the flurry and clamour of the spirit world. 

And for Tanuma, that would mean a world continuing to bar him from its motion.

Besides, maybe it’s worth the frenzy to appreciate these grounding moments. Right now, he is lying on his back as Natsume sits next to him. They’re inside Tanuma’s house, the garden in front of them and the sliding door pushed wide open to allow the country air murmuring outside to slip forth and touch their skin.

Tanuma cannot see outside from his position, but he knows that the sun has almost finished setting by the way the shadows quivering across the ceiling are growing dimmer by the minute. He can count the blurred shapes of three fish, imagines the glimmering red Natsume had described to him ages back. Their figures move lazily, the sun’s course will not hurry them, and they’d have no reason to worry about their shadows disappearing. Still, Tanuma cannot help but wish their presence wouldn’t flit beyond him like this. He catches a ripple of water, the flicker of one fanned tail. 

The space for the shadows draws smaller, one fish darts into it, the mottled swirl behind it its only remnant.

Tanuma blinks with a heavy sense of resignation, and wills the sun to slow down, at the very least to let Natsume stay longer.

“Ah--”

At Natsume’s voice, Tanuma panics for a second, wondering if Natsume had heard that thought. But when he cranes his neck it is only to find Natsume staring into the garden, his mouth parted. 

Tanuma pushes himself up so he’s sitting cross-legged. He’s greeted by a burnished sky, the melting sun pouring roseate light over everything. 

“What is it?” He asks, his heart feels full yet completely lightweight when he looks at Natsume. 

“A fish just--“ Natsume starts, his eyes wide. “It’s not red, it’s--“

And Tanuma is transfixed. He’s always thought Natsume looked like a sepia photograph, but facing the sunset, he’s golden; an ode to October awash in Autumn. He finds Natsume’s eyes, finds the back of his throat tighter than usual. 

“Gold,” Tanuma says. 

“How did you know?” asks Natsume, turning his head and defeating any chance of Tanuma looking away.

He’d barely choked out the word, unaware it was even spilling from him in the first place. _Gold_. 

He’d seen the fish reflected in Natsume’s eyes.

Tanuma breathes out a nervous laugh, curls his fingers against the mat. He blinks, and finds Natsume watching him carefully, and it doesn’t matter how hard he digs his fingers, Natsume’s gaze is still fixed on him. 

“It was reflected in your eyes,” he finally whispers. The admission is daunting; like falling without knowing what ground will meet him.

He hears Natsume’s breath hitch. Tanuma tries to exhale in turn, tips his head forward slightly in exhaustion. His ears feel like they’re on fire.

“ _Tanuma_.”

It’s a quiet thing, the syllables warmed by something Tanuma’s heart responds to with more certainty than his head. And the space between Natsume and him is less than he’d realised -- with a fragility to it, the same as in all the lingering seconds Tanuma has stolen with Natsume.

Natsume shifts, leans forward. And the shyness Tanuma sees in him is not the same as the first day they had met. That was a hesitance to give; this is more wonder at what it might mean to take. 

Tanuma wonders as well. 

“But it was gone fast and also--“ Tanuma pauses to swallow, notes the feeling of light warming his face at the same points he sees it spilling onto Natsume’s skin. “Your eyes are already--“

“Gold.” Natsume says. 

But he’s looking at Tanuma in a way that suggests he is not finishing the sentence.

Tanuma cannot stop the smile from pulling at his lips. Natsume smiles in turn; and it’s full of the shaky warmth of guarded things, like heat in a lantern. He draws closer, warmer.

Tanuma decides to stop wondering.

When he lets his eyes flutter shut, Natsume’s nose slides against his. When their lips touch, it does not burn. 

Tanuma thinks that, instead, it is a candlewick whispering against another. And there is more than his breath catching; there is warmth that Natsume presses into him, soft as exhaling. 

For once, he does not question anything when he reaches for Natsume’s hand. And he smiles against Natsume’s mouth when he finds that, this time, Natsume is reaching as well.

Tanuma does not care to know what the sky looks like right now, but there’s a flicker in his heart, more than dusk behind his eyelids. 

Slowly, Natsume kisses him alight.


End file.
